Hello Again!

Where on earth has November gone?

Hurricane Sandy hit the US East Coast, leaving lots of devastation behind, especially for residents of the states of New York and New Jersey.  The storm was considered by many to be a climate change wake-up call, which had all too easily been "forgotten" in the heated campaign rhetoric of the US Presidential election. This week, as the US national holiday of Thanksgiving approaches, there are still people who, because of Sanday's destructive aftermath, cannot return to their homes or who are still without power.

In part exacerbated by a bad cold, I found myself in a quite dreadful state of stasis in the first part of November.  I became unable to focus on anything beyond US Election Day, that is, 6 November, because I believed then - and believe now, for that matter - that the stakes in this most recent, and for me all-consuming, Presidential election were extremely high!  I had given up on the radio and television coverage - even here - because all that was being reported was the "horse race" situation between President Obama and his challenger, Mitt Romney.  The race was "too close to call," according to all the pundits and self-styled "experts."

As a fan of statistical probability guru, Nate Silver, I couldn't believe that this was quite the case.  But having seen two elections in the past 12 years that should have been won [nb: some of us continue to believe that they actually were won] by Democratic candidates literally be snatched from the jaws of victory at the last minute, I was very worried.  I could not bear the thought of this happening again.

Thankfully, Nate - who got nearly everything right in 2008 - did even better this year, predicting the correct results in 50 out of 50 states, even though it doesn't appear that he has updated his website to show the final Electoral Vote count.  As we all know with the benefit of hindsight, President Obama won re-election quite handily, with 332 electoral votes to 206 for Romney.  Only 270 were needed to win.  So, in spite of all the news frenzy about "closeness" and even with some close results in "decider" states, the race really was not close. Even better, the Democrats not only retained control of the Senate but actually gained two seats.  Together with two Independents who will caucus with the Democrats, this makes for a grand total of 55 out of 100 seats.  And Democrats did much better than anyone had expected in the House of Representatives!  While they remain in the minority (201 to 234), they regained eight seats that had been lost in 2010.  Best of all, they defeated some of the most radical RW Republican candidates.

So much for the so-called "enthusiasm gap" bruited about by the "Mainstream Media (MSM)" since 2010!  Despite these Democratic gains, however, the GOP continues to act as if their policies had not been heartily rejected by the majority of Americans.  In doing so, they make themselves even more irrelevant and out-of-touch and me, for one, extremely thankful that these entitled jerks were not able pull the wool over everyone's eyes.  Whew!

These results helped to jump-start me out of my stasis, at least to the point where I could finally complete research enough to draft syllabuses (syllabi?) for the courses that I will be teaching in January 2013.  I still have to whittle tons of material into palatable bites of knowledge and complete class preparations, but at least I am feeling semi-functional once again.  So, I'll try to get a posting routine going once again.